About

Hellpoint - A Dark Sci Fi RPG

CA$ 63,553

pledged of CA$ 50,000 goal

1,351

backers

Splitscreen Co-op

Hellpoint is a dark sci fi action RPG set in the aftermath of a massive quantum cataclysm called the Merge. For the blink of a second, every living being quickly lost their mind as their memories and bodies were merged with alternate versions of themselves from parallel universes. The accident also attracted entities of immense power that should have been left alone, in the depth of other dimensions.

You play as a mysterious nameless character whose intentions are entirely determined by your choices. You wake up in the derelict Irid Novo space station, in orbit around a super-massive black hole.

You have been 3D-printed by the "Authority", and given order to "finish what was undone" by any means you see fit. As you progress through the game, it quickly becomes apparent that you are being observed and that your choices will hold great consequences on the story of Irid Novo.

Who's lying? Who's to trust? Is anybody still sane? What makes you immune to the effects of the Merge?
More importantly, why do you feel like you've already experienced those events countless times before?

It is up to you to figure out what happened, and what to do. Your choices will shape up the future or demise of Irid Novo and of the whole universe.

Real Time Dynamic World

In the game, the space station orbits in real time around the ominous black hole. Its position in the sky directly impacts the sanity of the inhabitants of the station. The singularity is doing more than simply distorting the fabric of space and time; based on the time of the orbit, enemies in the levels get crazier or struck by fear, unknown entities roam the corridors and dozens of other mysterious events can occur.

Orbiting around an active black hole

Hellpoint is based on a peculiar structure called the Quantic System. It is a series of interconnected systems that are utilizing a server clock to decide when and where a particular dynamic event should occur. You can see a preview of that system in our demo linked below. You venture in a corridor that you previously walked through, and suddenly a new passage is opened. A tall menacing mini-boss is now patrolling where there was no one before. Enemies cower in fear as you approach them, or charge you in a fit of rage. A boss suddenly grows tougher and more aggressive, but also drops more valuable loot. It is up to you to figure out what events happen where and when so that you can exploit them to your advantage.

In Hellpoint, the Black Hole is truly the master of the dungeon.

Splitscreen Multiplayer

Irid Novo was once a shining beacon of intergalactic collaboration, built to research advanced artificial intelligence and quantum mechanics. Now, it is a dark and dangerous place dominated by the will of the cosmic gods. It is best to explore Irid Novo with the help of a friend.

Hellpoint supports splitscreen co-op and player versus player on all platforms. You can play the whole game with a friend, or have him jump up in and out anytime he likes. The loot is shared, and the experience of player two is saved and not watered down. In our youth, we've had countless nights of couch gaming fun, playing with friends and siblings until the sun rose. With Hellpoint, we want to bring back couch gaming into a genre that we think cruelly lacks it.

Visceral Flexible Combat

For centuries, the galaxy has been at peace. With the discovery of interstellar travel and the access to infinite resources that ensued, brutal wars are now a thing of the past. To survive the wrath of cosmic gods and hordes of monsters, you will have to find ancient blueprints and craft long forgotten weapons and armors and acquire forbidden powers. You play the way you want, will it be a sword and a shield, or a firearm and your mastery over the cosmic energies?

Hellpoint allows you to play the way you want. Using our crafting and customization system, you can adjust your weapons and powers according to your own play style. Do you prefer your healing power to heal more over time or instantaneously? Go edit your power in one of the crafting station, and make it work the way you like. Would you prefer your energy missiles to explode on impact, or to ricochet off enemies? The choice is yours to modify them as you see fit.

The more you fight with a weapon, the more proficient you become with it and eventually you unlock powerful abilities. This can go from an extra long range combo attack to a shattering explosion that sends enemies flying.

Ever Changing Universe

A terrible quantum cataclysm happened on board Irid Novo and is spreading to the whole multiverse. Piercing the very fabric of space to reach parallel universes is not something mortals should be allowed to play with. However, those breaches into other universes could very well be the key for you to make things right...

Every time you start a new game, the station is different. Rooms, enemies, puzzles, events, all are parts of the multiverse. This means that while our level design is carefully hand crafted, no two games are exactly the same. The game stay fresh as you never know what to except around the corner. As you die, you are pulled away from your universe of origin, and you wake up into the next. The more you die, the more the world changes around you.

To allow you to experience Hellpoint right now, we released a demo on Windows and Linux. Keep in mind that it is in pre-alpha stage and everything will be polished and tweaked continuously in the coming months. However, the main goal of the demo is to find out what you like or dislike and to make sure the game is as good as possible.

Your feedback, comments, ideas and critics are crucial to the success of this project. We are constantly online and listening to your feedback.

The demo requires a dedicated video card. It supports the following controllers;

Dualshock 3 (USB)

Dualshock 4 (USB)

Xbox 360 (USB)

Xbox One XInput Controllers (Ex.: Steam Controller)

Mouse/Keyboard

To play in split screen, you need keyboard and a controller, or two controllers. To invert camera controls, press V on the keyboard.

Hellpoint will be released on Windows, Mac, Linux, Playstation 4 and Xbox One, and is due to release in Q1 2018. On Windows and Linux, it will be distributed over Steam and GoG. Hellpoint comes DRM free!

Hellpoint is targeted to run at 60 frames per second on Playstation 4 in single player and at 45 frame per second in splitscreen mode. It comes with an uncapped framerate on Windows and Linux.

The Nintendo Switch and Mac platforms may be added to the list depending on the success of this campaign. See the Stretch Goals section below for more information.

Tentative list. Final list subject to change.

Final list of supported localization is subject to change following the metrics we will gather from Kickstarter.

See a language you would like Hellpoint to be translated to and is missing from this list? Show your support and contact us at contact@cradlegames.com!

Reference only. Design subject to changes. More designs may be offered.

Reference only. Design subject to changes. More designs may be offered.

All price are displayed as Canadian dollar (CAD). Conversion rate is subject to change from day to day.

The game is planned to be shipped on Q1 2018. Distribution is digital on Steam, GoG, Playstation Store and Xbox Marketplace.

Physical rewards will be shipped as soon as they are produced. The estimated date of shipping them is July.

Shipping fees are not included in the displayed rewards price and are added by Kickstarter on the checkout.

Any text for the message and invader perks are subject to review. Please keep it clean!

Items design are subjected to review and may be limited in scope based on the cost to produce them.

Add-ons are very simple. Select the reward level of your choice and then add the cost and shipping of the extra item(s) you wish to add.

Please verify the conversion rate from Canadian Dollar to your currency.

In case the campaign goes above the amount we ask to finish Hellpoint, we will add more awesome content and features to the game.

Play as an enemy mode: This mode would allow a second player to go around as an invisible "ghost" and possess enemies to make it more or less challenging for the first player.

Port to the Switch: If we reach that amount, we will port Hellpoint to the Nintendo Switch, and it will be added as an available platform for all to choose from.

The community goals work as followed; follow us and Hellpoint online and help every Kickstarter backer get access to exclusive content! Each times 8 goals are achieved, a new reward is unlocked.

It's free to do and only requires you a few second of your time.

Come talk to us! We want to hear what you think and what you believe would make Hellpoint even better!

Cradle Games is formed by veterans from Ubisoft and Activision. The three co-founders alone have over forty years of experiences working on AAA titles. The team is composed of nine experts who previously worked on games like Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, Prince of Persia, Star Wars, Spiderman, Rainbow Six, Skylanders and many more.

We believe we have the experience, resources and above all the passion needed to make Hellpoint a reality.

Here’s a few of the games we worked on:

We have no doubt that Hellpoint will be released. We have access to what we need to make that happen. However, we don't want to make just another game, we want to make a great one!

Having our nose into it all day long, we can't be 100% objective; we have been working on it full time since November 2015 and doing what we believe to be good, but it can only go so far. We need your feedback, your ideas, your comments and your critics to know if we are going on the right way or if we should adjust our aim.

We believe Kickstarter to be a great place to get that feedback we critically need. Download and play the demo. Come talk to use on Discord, Reddit or our forums and tell us what you liked and disliked. Tell us what works and most importantly what doesn't.

Risks and challenges

So let’s be real and actually use this section for what it is meant, to talk about risks. We’re very open and confident about what we do so we won’t try to distract you. We want to be as clear as possible and show the deepest respect for your support.

Market risk

We have already invested considerably into the project and we are going to continue to do so. We also found partners that are looking very closely to this campaign to know if there is a market for this game. Before Hellpoint, there was no sci fi RPG with splitscreen. They want to know if it was because nobody thought to do it or because there is no market for it. Kickstarter will allow us to answer that question.

Diversification of risk

Cradle Games has been initially funded by eight different investors and more are joining in. This Kickstarter campaign is part of our financial and marketing structure meant to allow us to deliver the core experience that we want to offer. However, it is not our intention to finance the whole game with Kickstarter; we have other sources that have invested and continue to do so as the project reaches different milestones.

What we can say is that we do quality work, and we do it fast and efficiently. So far our supporters have been incredibly pleased with the speed, efficiency and cost management of this production. That being said, we won’t release an unfinished product. We’ll scope according to what we can accomplish, and polish that to the quality that is expected.

Human resource risk

Currently we are a very production oriented team. Until we can hire internal resources to take charge of business development and marketing, we are doing it ourselves and have surrounded ourselves with professionals who are willing to support us in those efforts. Organisms such as the Technologic Business Accelerators (ACET) are doing an amazing job at helping us avoid costly business mistakes startups usually do. They are also investors in the project.

Visibility risk

The challenge for a company like ours is to get known. We have the product, now we need the visibility. There are many good games that are released each month and so we need to constantly improve our marketing skills. We also intend to hire more specialized resources to address this aspect, as mentioned above.

For any questions not answered here, don’t hesitate to contact us directly at contact@cradlegames.com regarding any inquiries for our enterprise.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 39 or more
About $29

Collector

On top of the above, receive the digital soundtrack of the game, a dark trip into sci fi polyrhythmic orchestra from the mind of Mikolaj Holowko and the digital art book of the game signed by the team.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 10,000 or more
About $7,463

Feast of the Jarls

Come visit the great city of Québec for a party you will never forget.

A personal invitation to you, brave warrior, for an epic all nighters feast with the team at the legendary medieval restaurant "La Chope Gobeline" where we shall party and sing until the last man standing.

If you come in winter, there will be maple syrup on the snow and if your availability is on a sunny day of summer, there shall be a pig "méchoui".

You must be able to pay for your travel and accommodation expenses, but the Earth-shattering party is on us!